Soft snow can hard work
to travel across, this isn't very deep, but will still have
an effect.
Not as bad as the absolute worst
surface ever - breakable crust. The surface appears hard, but
when you put your weight on your forward leg the surface breaks
and drops you the few inches to the harder surface underneath.
The result is that you have to "walk upstairs" to walk on the
level - all that extra energy just goes into uselessly breaking
the snow surface.
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